That was the point, it would be hard to miss — if you think the cops are overstepping, you test it by committing legal acts and standing up to them when they try to stop you.
Once we were handing out republican literature at an annual meeting of an electric cooperative. The police came to stop us. We had to speak quite some time to convince them that while the meeting was “private”, the sidewalk in front of the public building could not be “reserved” and therefore was available for literature and protest.
We can of course just stop doing anything that police don’t want us to do. But police don’t make the laws, they enforce them. There is no law against standing on a public sidewalk and taking a picture of a public building. The only reason he could “bait” the police is because the police decided it was suspicious.
And while a vast majority of terrorists have been muslim, a vast majority of muslims are not terrorists. And surprisingly to some, muslims do some things “normal” people do, like sightseeing. Until we get that whole “precog” thing working, we will be stuck with mere speculation that people are “up to no good”. And either sadly or thankfully, we don’t let police decide who is “up to no good” based on their speculation.
And that means that terrorists will get away with some terrorism, and that is the price we pay for not getting locked up for legal activity. A police state can be a safe place. It just isn’t a place I want to live.
“A police state can be a safe place. It just isn’t a place I want to live.”
Good, then get out of this country and move to a better police state. I’m sure Ed Snowden would give you a room in his apartment somewhere in the middle of that police state Russia. Snowden traded up, don’t you think?